Sawyers working with power saws within the wood processing industry are liable to injuries. In order to reduce the effects of such injuries to the body of the sawyer, particularly to his legs, various kinds of protective means have been developed, particularly leg-guards. The most common leg-guard is a pad consisting of 20 layers of a thin knitted nylon fabric which is secured to the trouser legs. Also pads of synthetic fur, i.e. a single pile thread fabric are available.
The purpose of the leg-guard is to prevent the saw-blade from cutting through, i.e. to oppose the effect of the saw teeth during the sawyer's reaction time, i.e. the time he needs to stop or divert the saw-blade away from the part of the body covered by the guard. The guard must also be able to resist the force of impact of the cutting bar against the guard.
Saw guards made from synthetic pile fur have proved unsatisfactory since the threads of the fur fabric are pushed apart by the saw teeth and therefore fail to offer sufficient resistance but instead allow the saw-blade to cut through the protective pad comparatively quickly. Saw guards or protective pads consisting of a large number of layers of a synthetic knitted fabric are rigid and also comparatively expensive to manufacture, as each layer must be produced separately and the individual layers thereafter sewn together.